How to Buy/Sell on eBay, Lesson #1

Lesson #1: Know your product and know your target demographic. Example, this “Bianchi Recumbent Bike” being listed from somewhere in the good ol’ 253 area code. The description says: “This is a vintage bike, what is called a messenger bike, with reverse pedaling.” At first glance, the seller has nailed the description as a laid-back kind of Bianchi bike, and who is more laid-back on a bike than a messenger? Every messenger needs a nimble bike like this when they want to reverse pedal away from a bath with soap. But if you read between the lines, the seller reveals himself to be of the social vangaurd when he equates “messenger” as “vintage”…slyly acknowledging that the messenger scene is so over now that mainstream ‘rents provide a pseudo-messenger bike to their spawn as part of the mandatory community college survival pack. Real MESSENGERS don’t exist anymore, there are only roving gangs of Jimmy John’s delivery riders threatening low-level office drones with ill-timed lane changes and soggy, bland sandwiches.

Notice that no frame size is indicated; this is because the only size that a REAL messenger cares about is a 12oz can versus a 40oz bottle…because the bottle is like way better because it’s twice as big as the can.